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Retailers had also spread out promotional deals across more
weeks this year to protect profit margins from surging supply
chain costs and to better manage inventories amid widespread
product shortages ahead of the Christmas shopping season.
Those attempts have pinched sales on what are traditionally some
of the biggest shopping days of the year, with data from Adobe
Analytics over the weekend showing spending online during Black
Friday fell for the first time ever, reversing the growth of
recent years.
U.S. spending on Cyber Monday, which gained popularity in the
mid-2000s as a way for online retailers to cash in on the jump
in consumer spending around Thanksgiving, is expected to be
between $10.2 billion and $11.3 billion, according to early
estimates from Adobe.
That translates to roughly flat growth at the midpoint compared
to last year's $10.8 billion, a near 15% jump from 2019 levels.
"We've seen the lowest holiday discount rates in recent
history," said Rob Garf, general manager of retail at Salesforce,
adding that discount rates in the United States in the week
leading up to Cyber Monday were on average 8% lower than they
were last year.
"There won't be more presents under the tree this year. U.S.
order growth across November is flat and consumers are
purchasing 1% fewer items per transaction," Garf said.
The start of the holiday season sales also comes when the new
Omicron coronavirus variant has triggered uncertainty over the
economic recovery, causing a selloff in the U.S. stock markets
on Black Friday. [.N]
A senior Amazon.com Inc executive has said it remains too early
to predict how the variant will impact consumer spending during
the holiday season but suggested that shoppers will press ahead
for now.
(Reporting by Uday Sampath in Bengaluru; Editing by Sriraj
Kalluvila)
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